Week of Aug 23rd, 2025

My weeknote days so far have been Wednesdays. It worked great because on short contracts or when I’m funemployed I have the flexibility to schedule two hours on a Wednesday to reflect, write, publish. I’m changing it to Saturday now.

Work

I’m starting a very intense contract for the next three months. I’m part of a team that wants to explore what a platform to allow people to create their own versions of gen AI can look like (so I will happily accept all thoughts and links to blog posts on the matter!). The contract is going to be intense for two reasons:
a. While I will start by building some toy front ends, The expectation is very much that I am able to touch the rest of the stack - and quickly.
b. This is going to be the first “long” contract I’ve done in about a year or so. A part of me thinks that I will dive head first into it - which is great! - but I need to be able to pace myself. This is a marathon, not a sprint (we aren’t yet doing Agile, heh).

Things I am looking forward to with this contract
a. Learning. SO. Much. I’ll be working with some people who have operated at the highest level of consumer tech in this country. And this is a pretty big country.
b. Feeding my curiosity. The last few months have whet my appetite for wanting to know how things work. I’m going to indulge depth in all of them.
c. The friend I’m primarily going to be working with has been pretty enthusiastic about code gen practices lately. I’ve been spending a lot of thought time on it over the last two months, and I’m looking forward to figuring out what real systems I can build with agentic llms on steroids. (Spoiler alert, I have a hunch things aren’t going to go as well as one would hope for this part of the experiment. But that’s the point - experiment.)

CRDT systems feel like table stakes these days. I’ve architected the third such system in three weeks - this time for a friend who is building in the legal tech space. They are actively looking for a founding engineer to lead their (small but impactful) tech team, DM me if you know someone who might be interested? JD here.

Life

I’ve spent the last few days preparing for the contract. So I went to all the doctors - dentist, gynaecologist, dermatologist, therapist. Got my hair cut, in the process of acquiring new glasses, got new headphones.

Mom has agreed to help with food for the next three months, so I’m incredibly grateful. That’s one less thing to worry about. That didn’t stop me from making a 4 avocado guacamole, or frying up 3 batches of onions (some in bacon fat, some in rice bran oil) to season my cast iron pan.

The Kemp vs Kickstart match was yesterday - a decider for Kemp. Last year, most of the matches were in the mornings, so a large number of us friends would go to BFA to cheer on Mithila and her team. This year, most of the matches were at 3pm on weekdays. And weekends I’ve had IWC, so I haven’t been able to make it. Some friends and I finally made it for this match... and it was exhilarating, but also so frustrating. The calls the refs made truly baffling. I understand football culture so much by going to these matches. I can’t wait to get super rich and fund some football. I’m also always down to play some football, so please contact me if you are ever around the area and have 5 other people to play with.

I’ll be in Goa over the next few weeks - if you’re going to be in the area, please hit me up!

Health

I’m back on gluten and dairy! The tests should almost no inflammation without them, but I don’t have a baseline to compare them to, so I’ve introduced both back into my diet. I’ll wait two weeks and do another test. I expect to continue experimentation with the diet for the next few months.

I think I’m going to have to take some of Litchee’s teeth out. There’s no two ways about it - his gingivitis is simply not getting better. I’ve asked four different doctors now (and I was on my way to the fifth!) when I realised I was clutching at straws. He doesn’t seem to be in active pain, but that’s easy for cats to fake. The mistake I’ve been making is thinking about cat jaws as analogous to my own, but that’s not true. If their teeth are removed, their gumline bones get tougher to compensate for it. In nature, lots of older cats lose their teeth due to rotting. Many cats in fact eat better with their teeth removed after gingivitis because they are not in active pain anymore. Not that any of this has stopped Litchee - he is still the most food-motivated cat I know¹ - but I’d also much rather make these decisions when he is still relatively healthy and can recover from something like this.

It is one thing to make health decisions for myself. It’s completely another to make these life altering decisions for someone who depends entirely on you, who you cannot explain any of this to. I’ve been thinking a lot about how my mother approached doctors when I was younger. How she responded to me when I told her about the diagnosis. I don’t think I forgive a lot of it (and I don’t think I ever will) but while earlier I had simply moved past it, now I understand a little more.

Learning

I’ve restarted learning the Kannada script with the help of Sarvabhasin. Calra and I have been trading each other pictures of letters - when we haven’t done it together in person, that is. The last time I did this (in 2019) I got pretty good at reading Kannada, but then I moved to Goa and lost it all. This time I don’t plan to move away indefinitely, so I hope it sticks for longer.

Media Diet

Reading

I’ve been listening to Shivani Vakil Savant read Sohini Chattopadhyay’s The Day I Became a Runner: A Women's History of India through the Lens of Sport. I really appreciate the lens Chattopadhyay takes in her writing. X happened, and it was important because Y was the predominant narrative. This event lead to Z being the norm for women in track/women in sport/women in India.

I started enjoying rap after I stopped listening to men in music. I started enjoying science fiction after I stopped reading books written by men. I started enjoying football after I regularly watched a women’s team play. I think I’ll get back into running in a way that’s actually sustainable as I’m reading this book.

Listening

Really like this new telegu song that feels like the spiritual successor of Oo Antava.